FRANK TALK: Telling write from wrong

Isn't it annoying when a column is littered with questions, just to lure the reader?

Don't you think?

Isn’t it annoying when a column is littered with questions, just to lure the reader?

Don’t you think?

Or how about when one-word questions are needlessly employed to move a column along?

Right?

And then there’s repetition, repetition, repetition.

As if saying the same thing time after time will actually engage a reader.

Like stating something over and over in slightly different language is actually informative.

Repeating, reiterating, replaying, recapitulating the same idea.

Again and again.

Or how about clumsy attempts to buddy up to readers with words of baseless praise?

You’re way, way too smart to be taken in by such a tactic – and way too good looking, too.

Then, of course, there’s the obligatory quote from a supposed know-it-all.

As Professor Roy Hibbert noted in a recent important treatise, “People can be like that sometimes.”

Then there’s the hack device of citing some so-called scientific study.

Maybe the following will illustrate that point.

A group of Liverpool zoological anthropologists recently learned that rats were resistant to attempts to talk them into performing certain behaviors.

The scientists attempted to influence a group of albino research rats into becoming more prudent investors by repeating over and over within earshot of their cages, “Short-term market forecasts can be risky.”

ABBA’s “Greatest Hits” was played on a non-stop loop to a control group.

A third group was provided with no auditory stimuli. However, an eight-by-10-inch photograph of Warren Buffett was placed into each of their cages, next to their exercise wheels.

The study conclusively found that rats forced to listen to “Dancing Queen” nonstop for 20 hours or more were subject to bouts of depression.

The findings’ relevance is clear.

Then there’s the use of statistics.

More than 78 percent of those queried in a recent study on studies didn’t like the way statistics were used to capture their interest, which is 60 percent higher than 47 percent of behavioral psychologists predicted, based on a review of 94 percent of previous studies.

The only tactic more reprehensible than employing statistics is a writer’s use of feigned outrage, expressed in ludicrously exaggerated terms.

That practice makes me so angry that my hands would be clenched into fists of barely controlled rage if I didn’t need them to type. Its practitioners should be subjected to a lengthy prison sentence, a heavy fine including forfeiture of property, or both.

There is a telltale sign, though, that a writer is employing one or several of these techniques to ensnare the reader.

And that is the abrupt end of the column in question, almost as if a certain word count had been reached.

Wareham Courier Editor Frank Mulligan can be reached at fmulligan@wickedlocal.com.